Florence Dore came to Kent State in 1999 from UC Berkeley, and since then she has been awarded an NEH Summer Stipend and a postdoctoral teaching fellowship at NYU’s Draper Program. In 2005 she published her first book, The Novel and the Obscene: Sexual Subjects in American Modernism (Stanford Univ. Press), which combines close readings with gender theory, psychoanalysis, and legal history. This interdisciplinary approach characterizes her second project, Not Knowing: Racial Equality and Forms of Privacy in Southern Modernism, 1890-1952, as well. Over 2008-2009, she will be on leave working on Not Knowing at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
Reviews of The Novel and the Obscene
"The cultural ironies and deconstructive logic at the heart of The Novel and the Obscene will appeal to the current generation of literary critics. I found Dore's thesis intuitively plausible and was... persuaded by her excellent analysis…the most comprehensive analysis of the [Sanctuary’s] narrative idiosyncracies and ‘weird world’ since John T. Matthews published his landmark essay… in 1984” Modern Fiction Studies, Read the Full Review
"The Novel and the Obscene combines attention to the specific context of American modernism with deft close readings and attention to the gendered dynamics of reception... Dore's closely-argued and inventive study offers a significant contribution to earlier work on modernism and censorship." Studies in the Novel, Read the Full Review
"The Novel and the Obscene delivers powerful, illuminating readings and offers valuable insight into the construction of gender in American modernism." Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Read the Full Review
Areas of Interest
20th-century American literature, Southern literature, feminist and gender theory, novel theory, psychoanalysis, Faulkner, O’Connor, law
Selected Scholarly Activity
Publications
“Psychoanalytic Theory and the Novel.” Blackwell Encycolpedia of the Novel. Ed. Peter Logan. London: Blackwell (under contract). 2500 words.
“Southern Modernism.” Blackwell Concise Companion to American Literature 1900-1950, eds. Peter Stoneley and Cindy Weinstein. London: Blackwell (Jan. 2008).
“Sister Carrie and Obscenity Law.” Teaching Literature and Law, eds. Austin Sarat, Catherine Frank, and Matthew Anderson. Options for Teaching Series. New York: MLA Press (forthcoming).
“Law’s Literature, Law’s Body: The Aversion to Linguistic Ambiguity in Law and Literature.” Law, Culture, and Humanities 2.1 (March 2006), pp. 17-28.
The Novel and the Obscene: Sexual Subjects in American Modernism. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press (2005).
“Free Speech and Exposure: Obscenity, the Phallus, and William Faulkner’s Sanctuary.” Narrative 9.1 (January 2001), pp. 78-99.
Review: Criminal Conversations: Sentimentality and Nineteenth-Century Stories of Adultery, by Laura Hanft Korobkin, Legacy 17.1 (Winter 2000), pp. 114-5.
Review: The Historical Roots of Yoknapatawpha County, by Don H. Doyle Mississippi Quarterly (Fall 2002), pp. 441-44.
Recent Papers and Presentations
"Faulkner and Modern Criticism: Southern Literature and the Institutionalization of "Difficulty." MLA Annual Convention. San Francisco, CA. 2008.
"Privacy Tort, Race, and the Southern Modernist Aesthetic.” Case Western Reserve Law School. Cleveland, OH. March 25, 2008.
“Through the Walls of our Houses: Privacy Law and Southern Architecture." Law, Culture and Humanities Conference. Boalt Hall, School of Law; University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA. March 28, 2008.
“Southern Modernism Revisited.” Invited Lecture, University of Chicago, Department of English. Chicago, Ill. March 12, 2008.
“Flannery O’Connor, Privacy, and Global South Studies.” Post*45 Conference. Harvard University. October 2007.
“Blanche Dubois and Humbert Humbert: Culturing Perversion in American Modernism.” Modernist Studies Association: 6th Annual Conference. Vancouver, CA October 2004.
Panel Chair, “The Black Hipster, the Cultured Pervert, and the Dead Woman: Incorporations of the Other in American Modernism. Modernist Studies Association. Vancouver, CA October 2004.
“From Dayton, Tennessee to Tennessee Williams: Assessing the Social Origin of Guilt in The Scopes Trial and A Streetcar Named Desire.” Association for the Study of Law, Culture and Humanities: Annual Conference. University of Connecticut School of Law. Hartford, March 2004.
“Bodily Evils and the Literary: Inversions of the Obscene.” Evil in Literature: An Interdisciplinary Conference. Georgetown University. Washington, D.C., April 2004.
“Faulkner, Silence, and the Creative Process.” Invited Lecture. California Polytechnic State University. San Luis Obispo, CA October 2002.
“Stillness and the Persistent Subject in Absalom, Absalom!.” American Literature Association. Cambridge, May 2001.